My Papers

Secure Insecurity

Security is a fundamental principle of state and main criterion of political legitimization. Security vs. discipline and law as instruments of governance. On one side we have hard power structure based on differentiation and blockade. A second side: security policy associated with globalization and flow processes. These two areas are closely related.

The obsession of security. What is the basis of security? Its absence. Nothing needs to be secured, except the security itself. Security is a fundamental principle of state and main criterion of political legitimization. Security vs. discipline and law as instruments of governance. On one side we have hard power structure based on discipline, differentiation and blockade, isolating power and closing the territories and the second side: security policy associated with globalization, intervening and controlling processes associated with liberalism because of security measures may work in the context of movement of persons and goods. The division proposed by Foucault and Agamben on the hard law and the dynamic activities of the security policy is an artificial assumption. These two areas are closely related, complementary and provide a medium for example laws can be quickly changed by power elite, or processes related to the commodification of human life forcing changes in security policy. The increasing dynamism and complexity of social space and violent forms of bio-capital make this model of thinking is inadequate. Bio-exchange. The idea of "life" is considered to be included in the domain of technology, both for economic profits and for security reasons. Meta-capital. Everything is partially interchangeable, as everything is connected. Life becomes a currency of the code. The code provides for trade, works as a social marker, as a new form of capital. We are seeing an increasing runway where we can no longer talk about the control of the phenomena that is so rapidly increasing complexity of the problems that becomes almost uncomputable. The terrorist act is a knot in which a large number of social processes intersects and explode . It is a kind of critical point in which the social combinatorial explosion emerge. This is not recursively describable phenomenon. Panic simulation and disintegrated social spectacle causes, that terror becomes the interest of the modern state. Disinformation and secrecy. The difference between the open and the secret implies a hierarchy, the first rule of power. On this difference, the structures called the state are being built. Security state is an engine of violence. Acts of terror and disaster are the lifeblood of political action. That is why they are provoked and stimulated by the power elite. Security require constant reference to the state of emergency. The quest for security leads to a global worldwide war. You have to change this state of things: reject the concept of security as a fundamental principle of state policy and test new models / constellations of power. The task of politics is understand of conditions that lead to terror and destruction, rather than control these phenomena, as already occurred.

Paper Abstracts

Secure Insecurity

by Robert B. Lisek

The obsession of security. What is the basis of security? Its absence. Nothing needs to be secured, except the security itself. Security is a fundamental principle of state and main criterion of political legitimization. Security vs. discipline and law as instruments of governance. On one side we have hard power structure based on discipline, differentiation and blockade, isolating power and closing the territories and the second side: security policy associated with globalization, intervening and controlling processes associated with liberalism because of security measures may work in the context of movement of persons and goods. The division proposed by Foucault and Agamben on the hard law and the dynamic activities of the security policy is an artificial assumption. These two areas are closely related, complementary and provide a medium for example laws can be quickly changed by power elite, or processes related to the commodification of human life forcing changes in security policy. The increasing dynamism and complexity of social space and violent forms of bio-capital make this model of thinking is inadequate. Bio-exchange. The idea of "life" is considered to be included in the domain of technology, both for economic profits and for security reasons. Meta-capital. Everything is partially interchangeable, as everything is connected. Life becomes a currency of the code. The code provides for trade, works as a social marker, as a new form of capital. We are seeing an increasing runway where we can no longer talk about the control of the phenomena that is so rapidly increasing complexity of the problems that becomes almost uncomputable. The terrorist act is a knot in which a large number of social processes intersects and explode . It is a kind of critical point in which the social combinatorial explosion emerge. This is not recursively describable phenomenon. Panic simulation and disintegrated social spectacle causes, that terror becomes the interest of the modern state. Disinformation and secrecy. The difference between the open and the secret implies a hierarchy, the first rule of power. On this difference, the structures called the state are being built. Security state is an engine of violence. Acts of terror and disaster are the lifeblood of political action. That is why they are provoked and stimulated by the power elite. Security require constant reference to the state of emergency. The quest for security leads to a global worldwide war. You have to change this state of things: reject the concept of security as a fundamental principle of state policy and test new models / constellations of power. The task of politics is understand of conditions that lead to terror and destruction, rather than control these phenomena, as already occurred.

Antiterror Line

by Bureau of Inverse Technology

The Antiterror line installed New York New York from March 2002. This service enables any phone to act as a networked microphone for collecting live audio data on civil liberty infringements and other anti-terror events. You call in and leave a message. Message may be spoken report or in-progress recording of an anti-terror attack. UPHONE uplinks your audio recording direct to the BIT online terror database. An audio accumulation of micro- incidents which individually may be inactionable but en masse could provide evidence for a definitive response. The bit UPHONE is a distributed, publicly readwriteable newsnetwork designed to withstand the militarisation of your government/the martial takeover of your regular broadcast networks. System facilitates information collection under conditions that cannot be accurately predicted / for which you may be unprepared, for example when an antiterror event occurs you may be away from your Desk. The resultant audio files are held in an open database and can be monitored, syndicated or remixed for your purposes. Bureau will provide a full report and system maintenance.

Body as a weapon aimed at you

by Marta Heberle

We’re obsessed with numbers, codes, and algorithms. As Bergson points out, since our intellectual capabilities are insufficient to perceive reality as an inseparable whole, we bring it to a standstill, atomize it into particles and ascribe numerical value to compound phenomena. We live in the times where even the very rudiments of life have already been measured and appropriated by the domain of technology. The code of life. The body described by intramolecular sequences looses its fleshy character and becomes abstract, inorganic, to use Freud’s terminology: uncanny. Processed and transformed into numbers: almost an abject. The feeling of estrangement assists exercising of power. Along with the recognition, manipulation and patenting of human genome, we’re becoming owned, our bodies turn into commodities, targets, biocapital. Our elemental data is converted into exclusive property of influential companies, pharmaceutical moguls, ruling elites, security services then sold, exchanged, released into circulation. Asymmetrical access to information results in a hierarchy between „us” and „them” and enables wielding of power. Such imbalance is the principle of human management and governing. The body is turned against you. It serves as a powerful weapon of the state. An arm of discipline and control. Involuntarily the body may become a medium, a carrier spreading the disease at the same time entangling itself in the network of politics, medical services, information distribution, transport, databases etc. The knowledge and possession of life code data may affect freedom of migration, decide upon inclusion or exclusion, facilitate human segregation alike eugenics, reveal weak points in human constitution thus delivering instructions where to strike to crash our bare systems or even providing formulas for creating a bioweapon capable of exterminating particular ethnical groups due to their slight DNA differences. Security state exists upon escalating the possibility of these threats, upon exciting the atmosphere of hazard. This leads to a constant state of emergency, to a permanent war. „The body is under attack on all fronts”. The body absorbed and exploited by the state machine. The war is being fought via biopolitical body, a gun pointed at you.

The London Psychogeophysics Summit proposes an intense week-long, city-wide series of walks, fieldtrips, river drifts, open workshops and discussions exploring the novel interdisciplinary frame of psychogeophysics, colliding psychogeographics with earth science measurements and study (fictions of forensics and geophysical archaeology).

Open events include practical workshops in building simple geophysical measurement devices from scrap materials, fieldtrips for study and long-term use of such devices in the city, measurement and mapping of physical and geophysical data during city-wide walks, deployment of strategic underground networks, fusion of fiction, derive and signal excursion, studies of river signal ecologies alongside short lectures and discussions of broad, interdisciplinary psycho-geophysical themes.

Bios of the Participants

Robert B. Lisek

Robert B. Lisek is an artist and mathematician who focuses on systems and processes (computer, biological and social), draws upon conceptual art, radical art strategies, hacktivism, bioart, software art and artificial intelligence his work defies categorization. Lisek is a pioneer of art based on AI and bioinformatics. He explores the relationship between bio-molecular technology, code and issues arising from network technologies. In the project Das Gespenst the artist represented the self-replicating behavior of new original bacteria in order to draw out its wider bio-political significance in an imagined scenario of bioterrorism attack of Warsaw. Lisek is also researching problems of security and privacy in networked societies. He build NEST - Citizens Intelligent Agency, advanced software for searching hidden patterns and links between people, groups, events, objects and places. Lisek is also a scientist focused on the complexity, graph and order theory. Lisek is a founder of IRSA, FRL and ACCESS art symposium. Author of many exhibitions and actions, among others: NGRU - FILE, Sao Paulo; NEST - ARCO Art Fair, Madrid; Float – DMAC Harvestworks and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NYC; WWAI - Siggraph, Los Angeles; Falsecodes - Red Gate Gallery, Beijing; Gengine - National Gallery, Warsaw; Flextex - Byzantine Museum, Athens, FXT– ACA Media Festival, Tokyo and ISEA, Nagoya; SSSpear –17th Meridian, WRO Center, Wroclaw.

Kate Rich

Kate Rich is co-founder of the Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT), an international agency producing an array of critical information products including economic and ecologic indices, event-triggered webcam networks and animal operated emergency broadcast devices. The Bureau's work has been exhibited internationally in academic, scientific and museum contexts.

Marta Heberle

Marta Heberle (1986) graduated cultural studies at the University of Lodz. She specializes in issues related to bioart and transhumanism. She is an author of theoretical texts concerning postmedia art. She also creates her own fashion design projects. Currently she also operates in an area of actions on the border of music and performance [Aural Treat, LH+].

Ryan Jordan

Ryan Jordan (born Ipswich, 1983) is a UK based electronic artist working with self made instruments and tools for live interactive performance. His work is focused on movement and the physicality in live electronic performance, noise and underground music, hypnotic trance states, and D.i.Y culture. He has performed and presented his work internationally in a wide range of venues from art and academic institutions to derelict warehouses and squats. In 2006 he started noise=noise, a sporadic experimental performance event, which has showcased many artists, academics, hackers, dancers, and performers ranging from the internationally acclaimed to the underground lurker. He directed A10Lab in 2010 which was an experimental audiovisual performance laboratory exploring free and open-source soft and hardware. Ryan has a BA Sonic Arts from Middlesex Unitversity (2007) and a Distinction in MFA Computational Studio Arts from Goldsmiths (2009). He is currently undertaking a PhD at the Music Technology and Innovation Research Centre at De Montfort University.